Quick ‘n Easy Marzipan Easter Eggs

Easy Easter Eggs Without Moulds

With Easter just around the corner let’s make marzipan Easter eggs, tasty Easter treats, made at home, following a recipe that includes a few, smart Pat-a-Cake modifications and ideas.  Also, we’ll make Easter eggs without moulds, and a couple with ordinary Kinder Joy plastic moulds. We’re going to use an eggless and easy, no cook marzipan for today’s recipe. Which means this quicker and easier recipe for homemade Easter eggs is definitely a winner.

You could use this same quick marzipan recipe to make marzipan fruits and flowers, sweet treats usually made for Christmas, or also to cover cakes. Another thing, cashew nuts could be replaced with almond flour in this recipe.

And in case, you want to check out another tasty recipe with cashew nuts, you might find this super-tasty Goan milk toffee recipe interesting.

Ingredients

For the marzipan

150g (approx. 1 ¼ cup) broken cashew nuts

175g (approx. 1 ½ cup) icing sugar

Approx. 4 to 5 tbsp sugar syrup

¼ tsp rose essence

1 ½ tsp cocoa powder

2 tbsp chopped almonds

A few tsp additional icing sugar

For the sugar syrup

5 tbsp granulated sugar

5 tbsp water

Boil for a couple of minutes. Cool.

Procedure

1. Roast the cashew nuts on low heat for around 5 minutes and let them cool to room temperature.
2. Also prepare the sugar syrup, mixing the sugar and water, and boiling the mix on low heat for 2 minutes.
3. Lightly crush the cashew nuts and then grind them along with the icing sugar in your mixer-grinder, in short bursts of grinding till you get a finely powdered mix. Grinding the cashew nuts with the icing sugar ensures that the powdered mix remains dry. That’s because the icing sugar absorbs any oil that the cashew nuts might release if over-ground. Grind the cashew nuts and icing sugar in three or four batches.
4. Then sift the ground mix to get rid of any tiny bits of cashew nuts. This is an essential step for making a soft and smooth marzipan.
5. To the sifted mix, add the rose essence (you could replace this with almond essence or vanilla essence if you want to) and 3 tablespoons of the sugar syrup to begin with. Continue adding in the sugar syrup, a little at a time, till you get a smooth marzipan dough.
6. Wrap the dough in parchment paper or cling film and let it rest for 20 minutes.
7. Make chocolate marzipan with a small portion of the basic dough (around one-fifth of it) by mixing the cocoa powder and the chopped almonds into it. Knead the chocolate marzipan to get a smooth ball. This chocolate marzipan can be divided into small portions, each one being rolled into a ball to form the centre of each Easter egg that you’ll shape by hand.
8. Colour the rest of the marzipan in colours of your choice, mixing in just a few drops of food colour. (When it comes to food colours, remember that a little goes a long way.) Please follow the video for some simple ideas for hand painting the Easter eggs.
9. Finally, let the marzipan Easter eggs air dry overnight or for at least 12 hours. After that, store them in a mithai or chocolate box lined with a kitchen paper towel.
10. The Easter eggs will stay good at room temperature for around 10 days. If you want to store them in the fridge, put them into an airtight container.

Enjoy!